He gave a long sigh of joy, and they then chatted almost quietly with an
air of intimacy, as though they had known one another twenty years. The
sound of the door bell made them start, and with a bound they separated
to a distance. She murmured: "It must be Laurine."
The child made her appearance, stopped short in amazement, and then ran
to Duroy, clapping her hands with pleasure at seeing him, and
exclaiming: "Ah! pretty boy."
Madame de Marelle began to laugh. "What! Pretty boy! Laurine has
baptized you. It's a nice little nickname for you, and I will call you
Pretty-boy, too."
He had taken the little girl on his knee, and he had to play with her at
all the games he had taught her. He rose to take his leave at twenty
minutes to three to go to the office of the paper, and on the staircase,
through the half-closed door, he still whispered: "To-morrow, at five."
She answered "Yes," with a smile, and disappeared.
As soon as he had got through his day's work, he speculated how he
should arrange his room to receive his mistress, and hide as far as
possible the poverty of the place. He was struck by the idea of pinning
a lot of Japanese trifles on the walls, and he bought for five francs
quite a collection of little fans and screens, with which he hid the
most obvious of the marks on the wall paper. He pasted on the window
panes transparent pictures representing boats floating down rivers,
flocks of birds flying across rosy skies, multi-colored ladies on
balconies, and processions of little black men over plains covered with
snow. His room, just big enough to sleep and sit down in, soon looked
like the inside of a Chinese lantern. He thought the effect
satisfactory, and passed the evening in pasting on the ceiling birds
that he had cut from the colored sheets remaining over. Then he went to
bed, lulled by the whistle of the trains.
He went home early the next day, carrying a paper bag of cakes and a
bottle of Madeira, purchased at the grocer's. He had to go out again to
buy two plates and two glasses, and arranged this collation on his
dressing-table, the dirty wood of which was covered by a napkin, the jug
and basin being hidden away beneath it.
Then he waited.
She came at about a quarter-past five; and, attracted by the bright
colors of the pictures, exclaimed: "Dear me, yours is a nice place. But
there are a lot of people about on the staircase."
He had clasped her in his arms, and was eagerly kissing the hair between
her forehead and her bonnet through her veil.
An hour and a half later he escorted her back to the cab-stand in the
Rue de Rome. When she was in the carriage he murmured: "Tuesday at the
same time?"
She replied: "Tuesday at the same time." And as it had grown dark, she
drew his head into the carriage and kissed him on the lips. Then the
driver, having whipped up his beast, she exclaimed: "Good-bye,
Pretty-boy," and the old vehicle started at the weary trot of its old
white horse.
For three weeks Duroy received Madame de Marelle in this way every two
or three days, now in the evening and now in the morning. While he was
expecting her one afternoon, a loud uproar on the stairs drew him to the
door. A child was crying. A man's angry voice shouted: "What is that
little devil howling about now?" The yelling and exasperated voice of a
woman replied: "It is that dirty hussy who comes to see the
penny-a-liner upstairs; she has upset Nicholas on the landing. As if
dabs like that, who pay no attention to children on the staircase,
should be allowed here."
Duroy drew back, distracted, for he could hear the rapid rustling of
skirts and a hurried step ascending from the story just beneath him.
There was soon a knock at the door, which he had reclosed. He opened it,
and Madame de Marelle rushed into the room, terrified and breathless,
stammering: "Did you hear?"